


A Pirate's Wife For Me

by SinisterScribe



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Big Fluffy Femslash, Charming in Leia's outfit, F/F, Hook is there for the booty, I NEVER write that, LITERALLY, Oh My God, Regina gets rescued, Regina is Han, Ruby is Chewbacca, Sorry Not Sorry, a mashup?, accepting no responsibility, and Once?, at all, bizarre, i have no explanation, james is awesome, probably, seriously, star wars?, steampunk?, that's an image I'm not getting rid of, this is Addicted1's fault, what a mess, what happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 18:04:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9836870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinisterScribe/pseuds/SinisterScribe
Summary: So...yeah.Once Upon a Time/StarWars mashup!What's not to love?!Right?Not even I know what's happening right now, so don't ask.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo...as you might hazzard a guess, this started as a joke. I'm writing an EC/Disney's Hercules crossover type deal (multichapter, greek epic, don't ask) and I loved Moana and enjoyed a moment of imagining Charming as Maui...but couldn't face the thought of Charming with long hair (curse you, canon) and started to drag and drop my EC pairing into different Disney universes. 
> 
> Of course, Addicted1 was there to aid and abet and because Disney owns about 90% of the known universe, we ended up in StarWars land. Now. it was all HER idea to switch the genders and then I confessed that I thought Han was an ass to everyone but Chewy and Addy pipes up with 'make it red queen and Chewy is Ruby then'. 
> 
> So my world is on fire and this is the fic that it baked. 
> 
> I've never written StarWars before and it's mostly my gumf that I was making up as I went along. Written all in one go, please excuse mistakes and be kind because WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING?!
> 
> Enjoy. 
> 
> I guess?

**A Pirate’s Wife For Me**

_Pain._

That was the very first thing Regina Solo became aware of.

Before there had been nothing but the blank dark and it was still dark but now there was _pain_. It wracked her body. She crumpled, falling forward and strong arms caught her.

Regina twitched, trying to kick out but her limbs went into spasm instead. She groaned deep in her throat and struggled to form words. Her fingers grasping for a blaster that she didn’t think was there anymore.

“Who…?”

“You must rest.”

“Hnngh!” Regina twisted when the synth voice grated against her over sensitised self.

“Easy.” The voice was robotic, the hands that held her felt like red hot steel through her soaked shirt. She tried to squirm away, to flee, but there was nowhere to go and she wasn’t strong enough to escape.

She bit her tongue against calling out for help. It had never been answered before. She wasn’t about to start now.

Even as that acid thought dripped in her skull she hoped for the rush of fur and muscle, for the howling roar of her best friend.

None came.

Not the shriek of battle or the slash of claws. No glowing red eyes in the dark. So much dark. There was no light anymore.

“Who…are you?” Regina collapsed against the floor because it seemed the thing to do.

There was a muffled sound, clips and buckles and the synth voice morphed into a very familiar one.

“Someone who owes you big time.”

“Princess?” Regina coughed a laugh and David’s answering chuckle was all the confirmation she needed.

“Yeah. It’s me. Now come on, I have to get you out of here.” Strong arms looped under her back and her knees and David lifted her bodily. It was easy to forget that he was actually quite a large guy.

Sure not as terrifying as his brother James but –and she would never admit this to him- he was a better shot with a blaster than she was and held a serene kind of calm in his own head that she had only read about in children’s books.

“Don’t throw up on me.”

Regina was about to tell him that she used to sleep in zero G and was unlikely to toss her cookies on anyone for any reason but then he turned to carry her away and the world spun alarmingly and she kept her mouth shut lest she make a liar of herself.

_Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha._

“I know that laugh.” Regina’s head lolled against David’s shoulder and she wished idly that she could see. Life was so much easier when she could _see_.

She heard footsteps running towards them, felt David tensed as he prepared to fight, she knew it was useless.

She let herself go limp as she was knocked from his arms. Heard him roar in denial because serene or not even the Prince of a dead planet had his limits.

She later found out that it took six of Jabba’s worst to restrain him.

She should probably stop calling him Princess.

… _nah_.

 

**_Later…_ **

 

Her feet hurt.

Well, all of her hurt, but her feet in particular were being quite vocal in that moment.

That was probably because they were bare and being dragged along the ground.

She had a guard on each arm, lucky lady that she was, and she hung limp between them. Her bare toes scuffed over the rough hewn floor and she didn’t have the energy or control to even make the attempt of walking. The guards spoke, she was pretty sure, but not in Basic and she wasn’t up to the translation right in that moment.

Could they not just let her lie down and die?

A shriek of metal and she winced at the sound. A door opened maybe. Things were blurry still, her eyes felt like she had sand under her lids. Her memory was coming back though.

Jabba. The fucking Hutts had her. Jabba himself had dumped her in a pit of carbonite and baked her in the stuff. She was lucky her arms hadn’t fallen off when the princess had defrosted her.

Defrosted was right, she was _freezing_.

“In!” The guard switched to Basic and propelled her forward.

Regina hissed when her shoulder clipped the doorframe on her way by and she staggered forward. Her bare feet slurring through pools of miscellaneous liquid on the floor and she drunkenly found a wall to prop herself against as she stopped rather suddenly.

A lesser pirate might have crashed into said wall but she was a damn fine pirate and she wasn’t about to start doubting herself now.

The door slammed closed with a clang that sounded like it had issued from inside her head from industrial mining equipment and she scrunched up her face to keep from voicing the pain. Making noise never helped and…oh, and it especially didn’t help when she was blind and _not alone_.

“Who’s there?”

All sorts of interesting fantasms danced across her mind but she snuffed every one of them before they could root themselves in fear. Fear was stupid and pointless. It got in the way of getting the job done.

Regina hauled herself upright against the wall, tilting her chin up and trying to look taller than her tiny self actually was.

“I said who’s there?!” She was not in the mood for games and if she really had to kill some bastard with her teeth then she’d rather do it now whilst she could still stand.

A low growl.

Regina tensed.

The growl rose into a whine and then formed words. Not in Basic, never in Basic because she couldn’t speak that. Her voice wouldn’t allow it.

But that didn’t matter because Regina would always be able to translate.

“Regina?”

“Ruby?!” Regina sagged back against the wall and _then_ was the rush of fur and malice.

Ruby bounded across the cell and Regina laughed, weak with relief, when she was scooped up off the floor and into the powerful arms of her oldest and truest friend.

“Regina! I smell you again!” Ruby howled happily, spinning Regina around in a way that made her nauseas again but Regina couldn’t care.

Huge velvet furred arms were wrapped around her, that sharp pine scent surrounded her, obscuring the stink of the dungeon and she was so _warm_. So blessedly warm.

Regina fisted her hands in Ruby’s hair and resisted the strong urge to climb her gigantic friend like a tree. She very much wanted to not be put down and left cold again. She was trembling violently and she told herself it was because of the cold. She told herself that her face was wet because of carbonite condensation. She lied like a goddamn _rug_.

“Yeah.” Regina would have been horrified if anyone else could have heard the weakness in her tone. “It’s good to smell you too, Ruby.”

Ruby made a crooning sound very like a purr and carried Regina back across the cell. The world shifted as Ruby lunged up and onto a bench or –no- into an alcove.

“It’s not great in here,” Ruby crooned a growl into Regina’s ear, licking her tears away, “but I dug a bolthole. At least it’s dry.”

“And warm.” Regina tried to shift, shivering violently now, and Ruby helped her, tucking her into the alcove and wrapping her big body around her comparatively tiny friend.

At nearly seven feet tall and weighing in at about three hundred pounds of fur, teeth and muscle, Regina was pretty well cocooned by Ruby. It was cosy, cramped even, but that didn’t stop Ruby’s claws from hooking under Regina’s shirt.

“Hey, watch it!” Regina tried ineffectually to bat her hands away but Ruby’s paws could entirely span her skull and crush it with a flex of her clawed fingers.

That and Regina was about as terrifying as a wet kitten right at that moment.

“You’re clothes are wet. They have to come off or you’ll never warm up.” Ruby was not to be dissuaded and Regina found herself in her skivvies faster than she cared to imagine.

She’d had no idea that Ruby knew how to work human clothing and was somewhat surprised that the Lycan had been paying attention all those times Regina had switched outfits in front of her.

“There,” Ruby nearly purred, “much better.”

She tossed her head, shaking her hip length mane forward and blanketing Regina with it. She tucked Regina in close, walling her in with long arms and legs and even her tail coiled around Regina’s clammy skin.

Regina’s teeth still chattered but she was markedly warmer.

“I’m sorry.” Regina blurted. Her words seemed to be falling out of her mouth rather than being spoken. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

Ruby snorted and the white tip of her tail twitched. She’d lost the end of it a few years back. When it had grown back, it had been a plume of white on the very tip. It was the same with the chunk that had been taken out of one of her ears and the riddle of stripes from the whip that marred her back.

There was a map of the galaxy on Ruby’s fur but it just showed everything she had survived.

Regina clutched at Ruby’s gigantic claws in both her hands and fought against the idea of all that dark fur one day turning entirely white. Did Lycans go all white when they died?

Regina suddenly never wanted to know the answer to that.

“Ssshhhh.” Ruby nuzzled the top of Regina’s head. “None of that. I’ve eaten bigger slugs than the Hutts. I was just waiting for Charming to get you out.”

“We’re not calling him that.” Regina spoke from behind clenched teeth to keep them from clattering. “Princess suits him better.”

“He’s not weak. Loving people is not weak.”

Regina stayed silent rather than have that fight again.

She leaned closer to Ruby, trying to leech as much heat as she could for Ruby definitely had plenty to spare even in this damp basement.

“Where’s his brother? Why isn’t he poncing about with his magic and getting us out? Why’d he let you come here?”

“Let?” Ruby rumbled. “That’s interesting. Nobody ‘lets’ a Lycan with a life debt do anything. I said I’d follow you anywhere, Regina. I meant it.”

“Still. Magic glowing sword, will travel. Where is the jumped up little shit when you need him?”

“I need no one except you and here you are.” Ruby answered with her typical _maddening_ serenity.

“You might have walked into your death.” Regina snapped.

“Worth it.”

Regina stiffened at that.

“I am _not_ worth- -!”

“Silence!” Ruby barked with a boom from her chest and Regina actually was silenced for once.

She would have looked up with wide eyes and probably was but she still couldn’t see a damn thing. Her imagination was quick to provide the flash of sharp white bared teeth behind black lips as Ruby bit each word at her.

“You saved my life. It is a debt. A currency you do not seem to know how to spend.” Ruby thundered, the vibration of her growls rattling the steel door in its frame even all the way across the room. “I will not sit here and listen to childish _nonsense_ after all I have done to keep you in this galaxy. Your life is not your own. It is mine. You keep your paws _off_. Understand?”

Regina blinked (she thought) and didn’t know what to do. It would seem the maddening serenity could ebb outside the field of battle.

Ruby snorted, a steaming gust of air that ruffled Regina’s damp hair, and bundled her even closer. She rested her velvet chin atop Regina’s head and growled in a low manner that was usually a precursor to skulls being popped and limbs torn off.

“Sleep.”

“But…”

“ _Sleep_ , little one. For the love of the Force, you will sleep so I can get us out of here tomorrow.”

“What happens- -?”

“A plan. One you are not privy to because you got yourself baked into a carbonite pie. Now; go to sleep.”

Regina opened her mouth to protest and found herself at a disadvantage because she couldn’t think of a single good thing to say. It made sense, to try and sleep off the carbonite hangover. To try and rest her eyes and regain her vision. Of course it made sense.

Even if she felt she had to say _something_ about Ruby putting herself in such danger for her, even if she did what did it matter?

Regina closed her eyes (again, probably) and felt herself drift.

She was asleep before she could think of the words that would have mattered anyway.

 

**_Tomorrow…_ **

 

Regina stood on the deck of the transport and weaved with the motion of it coasting over the dunes. She peered a little, squinting, and hummed.

“I think my eyes are getting better.”

“Regina…” Ruby rumbled, recognising that tone.

“It’s all a big bright blur rather than a big dark one. A marked improvement.”

“There’s nothing to see.” James half turned to look down at her. His hands bound behind his back. “I grew up here.”

He was annoyingly calm about everything in Regina’s opinion and she couldn’t help but needle him.  

“You’re going to die here too. How fortunate.” Regina smiled in his direction and Ruby growled.

“Plan.”

Regina ignored her.

Their supposed ‘rescuer’ had walked himself right into Jabba’s palace and gotten himself trussed up alongside the rest of them. So far, she wasn’t overwhelmed. She wasn’t even underwhelmed. At best, she was sitting on _whelmed_.

“Just stay close to Ruby and I’ll manage the rest.” James spoke with an audible smirk. She could _feel_ him eyeing her and then Ruby.

Of both him and his brother, James seemed to take to Ruby’s distinct lack of apparel with a tooth grinding pleasure.

Ruby was a Lycan and so had a sharp and canine cast to her features, her crimson rimmed golden eyes glowed and she was covered from the tips of her pointed ears to her paws in dark brown fur but she was _certainly_ female under all that fur.

James had taken it as a challenge and even when Ruby had broken one of his arms and Regina had threatened to airlock him…

“Though I imagine you’re well practiced at that.”

“What?!” Regina twisted to look at him, or the blur that might have been him, and was staggered when the transport slunk up and over the prow of a dune. She staggered and was steadied by Ruby moving closer to brace her with her own big body.

“See?” James chuckled. “Used to living in –hmm- _close_ quarters.”

“It’s not too early to be eaten, knight.” Ruby snarled.

James didn’t speak Lycan but he laughed at the tone.

Prick.

Any comment Regina might have made was stalled when she was set off kilter again as the transport slowed to a halt. Ruby held her up again and she nodded her thanks even as James was roughly dragged out of the sphere of her senses.

There was clattering and she much imagined that something like a plank was being arranged for them to walk.

There was also an unpleasant… _sound_ issuing from below.

“Is that what I think it is?” Regina half turned to give Ruby her profile.

“Yup. Sarlacc Pit. Old one too. Looks hungry.” Ruby rumbled.

“Out. _Standing_.” Regina hissed. Well, there were certainly better ways to go than being digested over a period of two millennia.

“You worry too much.” Ruby said.

“I worry exactly the right amount.” Regina huffed out a breath and tuned back in when one of the guards grabbed her arm and spun her to face the looming shadow of what must have been Jabba’s ship.

Something was said by one of the droids. Something about begging.

“FUCK YOU!” Regina shouted back cheerfully before he could even finish.

“Erudite as always.” Ruby sighed.

“What? Like I’m going to apologise?”

James was talking now. Telling Jabba to surrender so that he didn’t have to die. Typical knight bravado. Idiot was about to be dissolved and chewed to sunders (in that order if he was lucky) but Regina could see just well enough to note that he had struck a dynamic pose and was issuing orders to one of the more powerful bastards in the quadrant.

“Well, if you’d just paid the snake we wouldn’t…” Ruby grumbled.

“Hey, you’re the one that got yourself imprisoned and hired an _idiot_ as our rescuer. So if anyone is screwing up here, it’s not me.” Regina seethed.

“Because you had everything under control in your carbonite sarcophagus?” Ruby purred sweetly.

“Well- -what just happened?”

There had been a scream, not James’, and the transport had shifted as if something had tugged on its portside. Regina staggered back on instinct and crashed into Ruby when something heavy and dark rushed towards her.

James landed neat and catlike on the deck of the transport, a truly feral grin on his face, and his hand thrust up. The hilt of his enchanted sword smacked into his palm, his eyes sparked with magic and his sword _roared_.

The blade flared with a clash of lightning from a cloudless sky. Thunder clapped around him as it flashed fully ten feet long before throbbing down into its more manageable form. It sang as it rippled through the air and split the first guard neatly down the middle.

“Free me!” Ruby bellowed.

James lashed out, his limbs seemingly everywhere at once, a dervish of motion and mayhem. His blue eyes sparked with feral magic and he cut through three more guards before spinning with a flick from the tip of his sword.

The manacles on Ruby’s wrists split, the chains falling useless to the deck of the transport and Ruby threw back her head and _howled_.

Regina dropped to one knee, rightly sensing that it was the best course of action, and tried to stay out of the way.

Men screamed as Ruby bodily picked them up and hurled them from the transport. They fell babbling in terror into the Pit below and Ruby snarled savagely. Blood spurted, washing the deck, men died with bubbling screams and snarls split the air.

The transport bucked and a dark blur was all that was left of James as he bounded from the transport, fully fifty feet across the gaping maw of the Sarlacc Pit and onto the hull of Jabba’s behemoth ship.

A sixty gunner if Regina remembered correctly and she was never mistaken about ships.

James landed on a neat crouch on the side of the hull, his magic snapping and crackling about his boots, adhering him to the slick side of the ship. He ran up, straight up, barely pausing in the act of his sprinting to snatch a man here and there from the portholes as they threw them wide and tried to run out the guns.

His glowing orange sword lashed fore and aft, slicing through cannon like a hot knife through butter. Barrels as thick as a man’s waist tumbled down towards the Pit, all to be gulped down by the hungry mouth. The occasional limb from an enthusiastic gunner followed their weaponry into the abyss and James _exploded_ up onto the main deck with a roar.

With a shout, more magic poured down his arm and into the hilt of his blade. The sword throbbed, glowing brighter and extending to its full length. A whipping lance twenty paces long. It lashed across the deck like a slaver’s cat and struck the limbs from scattering cretins and crew alike.

James’ teeth bared in a savage grin as the crew scattered and he threw back his head and howled as hauntingly as any Lycan could hope to.

An answering scream meant that Ruby had heard him except she made the leap with nothing more than raw muscle power. Regina tucked safely under one arm and looking more than a little green.

“Don’t throw up on my ship!” James laughed at her.

“Your- -we’re stealing the SHIP!?”

“And ye call yerself a pirate, love!” Hook clattered out of one of the doors, his silver claw caught in the cheek of a dying guard. “Of course we’re bloody stealing it!”

“Man the gun, Rubacca!” Hook cheered and kicked the man’s skull off his hook. He hefted his blaster and shot another without even a glance.

“This way.” Ruby hauled Regina up onto the main platform and keyed the controls of the thuama cannon.

It spun on its turnstyle, spinning back towards…

“Not the bridge.” Regina whimpered and took a knee again when it became clear she was very much a spectator for this goatfuck affectionately known as a rescue.

“Just a warning shot.” Ruby hummed and cranked the wheel of the gun so that the angle was manually set.

A klaxon suddenly sounded. A wailing alarm and screams went up from below decks.

“That’ll be David.” Ruby grumbled, looking up at the sun. “A little early but I suppose he didn’t like Jabba’s company.”

Glass shattered and –had Regina been able to see- she’d have seen the Crown Prince David hurl a crewman out of the window and screaming onto the dunes below. He appeared –wearing _very_ little- in the window, clutching the arm of the golden suit of armour than they knew as H3N-Ree. The suit babbled as David bodily lifted its hollow shell and hurled them both from the bridge to land with a tumble on the deck far below.

“Is he…naked?” Regina squinted.

“Might as well be.” Ruby grunted and slammed her hand down on the thauma cannon’s firing mechanism.

The cannon roared, pure magic blasting from the barrel and impacting on the bridge.

 _Very_. Precisely.

Something corpulent and meaty, something already _quite_ dead, was blasted clean out of the bridge with –comparatively- little damage to the surrounding structure.

Regina rose up a little, desperately trying to believe her hazy eyes as the lifeless and charred blob that had been Jabba the Hutt tumbled from the hovering ship to splatter onto the sides of the Sarlacc Pit far below them. She felt her breaths come in short sharp pants as the weight of the debt was lifted.

The Dark One…the Dark One was dead.

…dare she even hope?

Ruby cranked the controls of the main thauma cannon again, the dais on which it stood rising up, leaning over the side of the ship. Regina clutched at Ruby’s steel muscled leg to stay balanced and she flinched as the cannon fired again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Again and again until the Sarlacc Pit could reach Jabba’s bloated corpse. Again until the sand was glass and magic steamed up in thermals that set the ship to rocking. Again until Ruby’s growls finally died in her throat and she pulled the gun back over the side of the ship to bring it back to rest on the deck.

“Is he…?” Regina couldn’t even bring herself to speak it.

“Dead. Quite dead.” Ruby lowered herself to crouch by Regina’s side. Though she was so large she still towered over her.

Regina shivered all over. She could barely credit it. It didn’t seem real. After so many years of torment, of running, of _fear_ …she was free. Her life was finally her own again.

Which meant…Regina looked up and she could see Ruby’s face clearly enough, her red lined eyes glowing softly. Her long mane clouding around her in the desert breeze.

Which meant Ruby was free to go.

Her life debt paid in full.

Regina swallowed hard and wondered how victory could feel like loss.

 

**_The Falcon…_ **

 

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

Regina flinched, spinning away from the heartstone of the _Falcon_. She hefted the wrench used to fit the harness around the floating crystal that gave the ship its flight. She weighed it in her hands and then thrust it back into her belt.

3m-Ma, the battle droid, twisted her turret back and forth to look between the pirate captain and her first mate and whistled in a low and studiously nonchalant manner. The droid lifted itself on its stubby little legs and tottered out of the room as fast as it could.

Regina scowled after the brass topped little traitor and then turned back to Ruby when the Lycan loomed further into the engine room.

“What would be wrong?” Regina smiled, dredging it from somewhere. “Hutt’s dead. I’m free. You’re free. Got the _Falcon_ back with nary a scratch on her whole self and Hook’s finally got his own ship and might shut up for three consecutive minutes. _Everything_ is dandy.”

Ruby frowned fiercely.

“We’re free.” Ruby rumbled and the crystal heart of the _Falcon_ chimed in harmony with the tenor of it.

“Yes. Your, uh, your debt is paid. Jabba’s gone or wishes he was. My life is my own again. I don’t need to run anymore and this was…this was never your war to start with.” Regina turned away from Ruby and needlessly checked the crystal’s harness.

It was fine. Better than fine. She had stripped it down and refitted it twice in the past few days. The _Falcon_ flew faster and in better trim than she ever had in her entire life and it was because Regina’s neurosis was –as always- best channelled into her ship.

“Never my war…are you _mad_?!” Ruby snarled and Regina twisted to look over her shoulder as the towering Lycan seemed to fill the whole engine room. Her fangs flashed as she bared her teeth and then she stalled when something seemed to occur to her. “Regina…what do you think a life debt _is_?”

Regina turned, leaning against the brass and leather fittings that held the coffin length heartstone in the dead centre of the ship. She felt the thrum of the thauma energy play over her skin and it comforted her as few things could.

“It’s what it sounds like.” Regina folded her arms over her chest. “A debt that can be repaid when you save my life. Well, good. Job done. There’s the hatch. Don’t let it shut on your tail on the way out.”

Ruby’s pointed ears pinned back and her scowl was fearsome. Her teeth bared and she snarled low and terrible though Regina couldn’t fear her if she tried. Ruby was the only person to have never hurt Regina.

Yet.

“No.”

“No?” Regina raised her eyebrows.

“You are wrong.” Ruby snarled. “That is not what a life debt is. Not to a Lycan.”

“Enlighten me then.” Regina gritted. This was painful. If Ruby was to leave then let her leave but there was no need for her to rake claws over fresh wounds like this.

“It is…an exchange.” Ruby seemed to soften then, seeing more of Regina than Regina ever wanted her to. Smelling it in all likelihood. “My life for yours and vice versa. We do not…give them back. It cannot be repaid or exchanged.”

Regina frowned at that. Not able or perhaps unwilling to understand. Ruby sighed and prowled closer, looming over her tiny female.

“Do you mean to tell me that, after all these years, you think I was simply waiting to pull your fat out of the fire?”

“What fat?” Regina did scowl then and Ruby laughed, leaning down and nipping Regina’s ear with her teeth in a soft wolf kiss.  

“Apparently the fat that lives between your ears for there doesn’t seem to be a brain in there.” Ruby grinned when Regina glared at her. “You truly don’t know? Piratical genius of the seven galaxies and you haven’t figured out what’s right under your perfect little nose?”

“And what would that be?!” Regina planted her hands on her hips.

“I am not your _slave_. I owe you nothing save my heart. I am your _wife_.”

“My…” Regina’s brain hauled on the emergency stop lever and her teeth clipped together before she could say something stupid that was going to ruin this for them both. She blinked, absorbing that and then tried again. “What?”

“We are married. In the way of my people. Have been for decades.”

“ _What?_ ” Regina gaped.

“You threw away your career for me. Knocked the teeth out of your alpha and took me away on a ship you stole. A more romantic proposal I have never had. So naturally I accepted.”

“WHAT?!” Regina’s mouth hung open and she stammered for long moments.

“Shocking, I know, it’s been a long road to the honeymoon but I _did_ just present you with a kill of great value so-ooo…?” Ruby cocked her head, letting one of her ears flop over in the manner in which she knew made Regina’s eyes go soft and melted _like that_.

“What the _HELL_?!” Regina looked like she was torn between hysterical laughter and tears.

“Perhaps saying ‘married’ was inaccurate.” Ruby mused with a thrum. “It is more like we have been in the process of exchanging vows since the moment we met.”

Regina cleared her throat forcibly and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. So of course the words fell out instead.

“Seems mighty patient of you.”

“I’m over two hundred years old. Comes with the territory. Now, I must ask your forgiveness because I have not strictly adhered to the law. I suppose I should have presented you with Jabba’s head or his skin but I was a little caught up in the moment and rather preferred blasting him to smithereens.” Ruby rubbed at her chin with one clawed hand and hummed. Her tail flicked with a swish and then she visibly brightened. “Would you accept the overthrow of your mother the Empress of All as a fitting substitute?”

Regina was _aware_ that her mouth was hanging open. She was aware of what Ruby was offering her and she was very much aware that to throw it away would be the height of nonsense but she was smart only when it came to ships and hardly a catch herself. Surely Ruby deserved better than this…?

“Say ‘yes’, you fool!” James bellowed from down the corridor. “Then please have wild sex, I’m running low on magic!”

Regina clipped her teeth together, her face suddenly feeling hot but Ruby pounced on the opportunity.

“See? We’d be helping the war effort. We need all the Knights we can get.”

“That’s what it will be.” Regina’s voice felt too small for Ruby. Every part of her felt too small and not enough all of a sudden. “It’ll be war. My mother won’t go quietly. She’s killed everybody I’ve ever loved.”

“So, if you fear for me then am I to take it…?” Ruby spoke and for once her serene confidence seemed to waver.

It slapped Regina in the face then. She didn’t _know_. She had never SAID.

“Yes.” Regina nodded, her eyes burning. “Yes. I love you and no. I cannot bear to lose you.”

“Then don’t.” Ruby bent down, right down, until her forehead could rest against Regina’s. “Be mine. Be mine and I shall be yours and together we will power the Last Knight with the wildest of sexes and overthrow your Huttspawn of a mother. What do you say?”

Regina laughed wetly. She couldn’t help it.

What else could she do?

“Yes. Yes.” Regina stretched up and wound her arms around Ruby’s neck. “A thousand times yes. To all of it.”

Ruby thrummed a deep and wicked chuckle. She lashed out with her paw and kicked the door to the engine room shut, taking Regina down to the floor in one move.

The honeymoon was finally here, after all.

And she intended not to waste a moment of it.


End file.
